Sometimes I don’t know why you even asked.
It’s not as though the world was on your case
Or convention taking you to task
For not yet getting hitched.
Yet ask you did,
And I
Fie!
Said yes,
Because you’re good and kind
And the sort of person who SHOULD
Be utterly, perfectly good to spend some time
To spend a life – with and never without you
But all those plans fell through
Although they were beyond our control
And neither of us was equal to the task
Of getting our shattered lives repaired
But sometimes you say things
Which make me wonder WHY you asked
When so much of what transpired
Was the process of us suffocating
One another – love expired
Exchanged for barely-veiled disdain
Irritation, confusion and that old refrain
In every word and look which slips through the guard
“I don’t want you.
I don’t want you.
Life is hard
And you make it worse.
Now it feels like having asked you was a curse
Designed to poison you and me
We’re doomed to fail, eventually
So let’s aid the process with apathy”
Revulsion, repulsion, rejection

And indeed, why bother?
Why sacrifice yourself on the alter
Of the false idol of marriage
When you don’t even like each other
And everything you had got bleached away
By circumstance and happenstance
And a disinclined lover
Who, somehow, you suspect
Maybe
NEVER
Wanted you.

We cry our raindrop tears
From sodden, marble lids
Let the wind howl our lament
Let it carry from our midst
Around the world
The rending of our sorrow
Will be heard

Our faces staid in masks
Of long-borne grief
Observe the pain of years
Ne’er destined for relief
From this sharp world
The rending of our sorrow
Must be heard

Our lonely arms
Will ne’er embrace elation
Alabaster; raised
In stony supplication
Yielding to the world
The rending of our sorrow
Shall be heard

Our bodies fixed in anguish;
Dolor carved
We cling forever,
Our misery never halved
By this cruel world
The rending of our sorrow
Needs to be heard

Our heartache on display
Eternally
Algos, Akhos, Lupa;
Grievers, we
Lament this world
The rending of our sorrow
Will e’er be heard

Our prompt today was to write a persona poem; one a bit more serious than other, recent prompts have elicited, and so, being tired of life and in the kind of mood where sadness is hanging in the edges of the air, I wrote of statues, carved forever into their pain – a public spectacle of misery which would result in congratulation for the sculptor and endless sadness for the statues (were they sentient (not in a freaky in-yer-face, Dr Who-style way, either)).

So I researched to figure out who would like as not be turned into such a piece of artistry and upset, and the Algea appeared in my world – three Greek goddesses whose embodiment was grief, sadness, and mental and physical pain. Learn more about them here.